Trouble using Japanese Fonts in Adobe

I've downloaded some free Japanese fonts and want to use them in programs like Illustrator or InDesign. They come as .ttf for Windows and .suit for OS X. Neither have displayed anything but rectangles in Adobe or word processors. On both operating systems, the fonts seem properly installed but they don't work with the Japanese text I copy and paste in.

The Japanese fonts which appear to have been preloaded on my system work fine, so i know I can display Japanese but no other fonts i acquire work.

Thanks for your help, Té. This is quite beyond my realm of knowledge....so what does the fact that they seem to be 8-bit mean practically? I would like to know if I will be able to use them or if there are better places to get free Japanese language fonts.

Many of the free hiragana or katakana-only fonts found on the internet, including i2f's, appear to be encoded for entry with any of various western Latin (8-bit) keyboard layouts. The kana are mapped to the characters A-Z, etc. and not the proper Unicode points for their own script. This is inconvenient, but since most of these are clearly display fonts not intended for extended text use, it's an issue that can be dealt with. Some of these font developers supply a keyboard chart, but if you can't find one you'll have to experiment a while to determine which key corresponds to which character and draw out your own chart.

If you really must use these fonts with properly encoded Japanese text or with one of the Japanese keyboard entry modes, you'll have to open the fonts in FontForge (only because that's what I have; other font editors may work too) and copy the glyphs to their correct unicode positions and generate new properly encoded fonts. You should, of course get permission of the original designer and/or foundry for permission before you do so, but that may not be possible.

To the OP: Given that you stated that you're specifically looking for Japanese fonts that work with Adobe applications, have you poked around on the product DVD (or DVDs) that you received? I believe that we bundle many fonts with most of our applications, including Japanese ones. Look for a font folder, and inside look for files that include the strings "KozMin," "KozGo," or "Ryo." If you find such files, these are OpenType Japanese fonts that will work with Adobe (and other) applications.

Lunde,
Yes I have been playing around with the included Adobe fonts, they're just a little too universal-looking/plain for this particular design job.(gig poster) They will work for other projects I'm sure.